


One Golden Glance of What Should Be

by amerande



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), And it was an angelic attention which, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley switches pronouns (Good Omens), First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Genderqueer Crowley (Good Omens), Happy Ending, He/Him Pronouns For Crowley (Good Omens), Historical, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Just enough angst to make the fluff shine, M/M, Modern Era, New Year's Eve, New Year's Fluff, New Year's Kiss, One Shot, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Pillow Princess Crowley (Good Omens), Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Pre-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Queen (Band) Lyrics, Service Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), She/Her Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens), Smut, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Soft Crowley (Good Omens), South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Winter, god bless I just love the idea of Crowley laying down and lapping up aziraphale’s infinite attention, is much broader and has the advantage of having thousands of years of practice., while not being particularly more profound than human attention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:26:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21902206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amerande/pseuds/amerande
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale have spent a long time as professional enemies, but that doesn’t mean they have to like it.OR: The smutty holiday one shot!
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 194
Collections: Top Aziraphale Recs





	One Golden Glance of What Should Be

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Queen’s “A Kind of Magic,” following the sacred rite of allowing our fanfic titles to slowly morph into Queen lyrics. 
> 
> My perpetual thanks to [curlycrowley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curlycrowley/pseuds/curlycrowley) for everything she is, which includes being an excellent beta. 
> 
> And now: holidays with the ineffable husbands.

**1914**

When Crowley finally found Aziraphale, the angel was standing alone on a snowy hill somewhere in Belgium. Crowley walked up to stand beside him, looked, and understood.

Spread out below them was a ravaged no man’s land, riddled with the pockmarks of bullets and shells, littered with barbed wire and hasty barricades, churned to mud a half-meter deep by months of fighting and night excursions to reconnoiter and reclaim bodies. It stretched north and south as far as he could see: sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, always awful.

And in the no man’s land were soldiers, hundreds of them, gathered around exchanging greetings and drinks and cigarettes. He could hear Dutch, French, English, German words rising above the hum. Laughter. Someone had banged together a lopsided star from a ration tin and set it atop an upended log like a Christmas tree topper.

“Your doing?” Crowley asked.

“No,” Aziraphale said, his voice choked. “No, the humans thought it up themselves.”

A moment passed. Crowley cleared his throat.

“But,” Aziraphale said, “I think most of them will find their drinks a finer vintage than they expected.”

“Just what the war needed. Hungover artillerymen in charge of munitions on Christmas Day.”

“It’ll last,” Aziraphale said, his gaze still fixed intently on the soldiers below. “It has to last.”

“You know it won’t, angel,” Crowley said, but his voice was soft and he regretted the words.

“Maybe a few days, though,” he added after a moment—like an apology.

Aziraphale sniffed.

Crowley held out a flask of hot—as if it would _dare_ grow cold, even in this weather—buttered rum. Aziraphale took a drink and then looked at the flask approvingly.

“Just the thing,” the angel said, offering it back. His cheeks were a brilliant pink from the cold, and his eyes were too-bright with sorrow and hope, but he smiled at Crowley and it was genuine.

They both turned back to observing the truce playing out, passing the rum back and forth and wrapped up in their own thoughts.

At length, Aziraphale spoke again. “Do you mind if —that is, I was going to do some blessings.” He looked a little nervous.

“By all means,” Crowley said with an expansive gesture.

He felt the whisper-light warmth of Aziraphale’s blessings brush past him on their way down to the trenches. That was enough for him to feel the general outline of some as they floated by: safety, healing, miraculous luck, good news from home. All aimed at men on both sides.

“I do hope you won’t cross any of these,” Aziraphale said after he was done. Crowley thought it sounded like a joke and not at all in earnest. It was nice, on occasion, to be reminded that they were friends—despite everything.

“Nah,” he said casually, “I’m here on holiday.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “And a lovely place for it, too,” he said with a sly smile—the one that always took Crowley by surprise and made him wonder how much of Aziraphale’s guileless demeanor was for show.

“There’s worse,” he said defensively, and the angel didn’t push the point.

They stayed like that for a long time, until the rum had run out and night had long since fallen. There were a few bonfires blazing in the darkness, with soldiers clustered around them with no care for country or side.

Above the din of everyone talking, one voice rose—then another and another, until the song they were singing spread from one trench to the other and all through the no man’s land. Some voices were singing in English, many others in German, but the tune was the same—or near enough.

As the song went on, Crowley suddenly found it hard to breathe. There was a tight band around his heart that only grew worse when he looked at Aziraphale and saw the deep sadness etched there. The angel turned to look at him, and Crowley took a half-step back, opening his mouth as if to speak—but he had no words.

“I think I’d like to go, now,” Aziraphale said, his voice so soft it almost wasn’t there. “Would you like to come back to the shop?”

Crowley only nodded.

Two miracles later, they were both peeling off their outer coats in the suddenly too-warm confines of Aziraphale’s bookshop. Aziraphale got out a fortified wine and two glasses, and by wordless agreement, they both settled down to the serious business of reducing themselves to insobriety with expedient determination.

It was Aziraphale who spoke first, long enough later that Crowley’s thoughts were pleasantly fuzzed.

“Strange,” the angel said with the sort of extra-careful diction he adopted when he was drunk enough to slur but sober enough to still care, at least a little, “how they can do that.”

“How who can do what?” Crowley asked, half-expecting to find out that Aziraphale had somehow followed a trail of thought to something absurd like the burrowing habits of some frog.

“Humans,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley’s heart sank a little; he took a long drink. “Go to war and then call a ruddy truce and then—then they’ll go right back to it. Pick up their guns on Boxing Day like nothing happened.”

“Job’s a job,” Crowley said, although he was loathe to perpetuate the conversation.

“Think their superiors, their generals, what have you, approved it?”

Alarms were blaring in Crowley’s mind. Bad enough to watch the analogy play out, wasn’t it? Why did the angel have to point out each awful part of it?

“Some might,” he said, rather than arguing. “Not most.” Neither of _theirs_ , certainly.

“No,” Aziraphale agreed, and he held his cup to his chest like a little hug and looked morose. Crowley wanted to comfort him, but he didn’t have much comfort to give: there was no truce in the war between Heaven and Hell. Even their mutual non-interference was tantamount to treason.

Somewhere in the night, a bell tolled. Crowley looked up; it was midnight already.

“Happy bloody Christmas,” he said miserably, and he refilled his glass.

* * *

**2011**

Crowley, as Nanny Ashtoreth, bade the Dowlings a happy new year and excused herself. Being as he was only three years old, Warlock was fast asleep already and needed no further supervision from her.

She made her way through the early evening, down the little gravel path and around the bushes that gave the cottage that was her home some semblance of seclusion. To her surprise, Brother Francis was sitting on a stump near the front door, looking perfectly comfortable and deeply engrossed in whatever book he was reading. On the ground beside him sat a bulky paper sack.

“Good evening,” Crowley said, and Brother Francis got up hurriedly and gave her a sloppy sort of bow.

“Evenin’, ladyship.”

“Can I do anything for you, Brother?”

“Wouldn’t say no to a spot of tea,” he said.

Crowley nodded and let him follow her into the cottage.

As soon as the door was shut and the blinds closed, the facade of Brother Francis was gone, and it was only Aziraphale in her home, taking off his woolen cap and his great overcoat and hanging them by the door, stepping out of his muddy boots, and bringing the paper bag into the living room with him. For her part, Crowley kicked off her loafers and set down her purse, then without any ceremony at all flopped down onto her couch in a manner most unlike her prim comportment around the Dowlings.

If Aziraphale found the behavior incongruous, he made no sign of it. Instead, he only asked “Can I actually get you tea, or would you like something stronger?”

“Have I got anything bubbly? It’s New Year’s Eve, after all.”

“I’m sure there’s something,” Aziraphale said with the casual confidence of a being who could, after all, _make sure_ that whatever he was looking for would appear.

Indeed, he shortly had a bottle of Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises uncorked and a celebratory pour ready for them both. Crowley took the glass he offered her and watched as he pulled an odd but extravagant feast out of the paper bag he’d been carrying. First came a whole mess of fried chips that smelled delightfully of malt vinegar, which he set in front of her. Next came a generous bunch of grapes, two wedges of cheese, a summer sausage, and rolls that smelled as if they’d just that moment been pulled from the oven. Finally, he produced an apple galette and set it aside, as if in a place of special reverence.

The rest of it was nice and all, but Crowley knew—and appreciated—that the chips were all hers. When Aziraphale held his glass up in a toast, Crowley waved a handful of chips at him instead of raising her own.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked.

“Seemed the thing to do,” Aziraphale said simply. They did not spend a great deal of time in each other’s company, for the sake of appearances, but every so often Aziraphale—and it was always Aziraphale, never herself—would make some excuse or find a way for a clandestine meeting.

It rather amused Crowley to think of the scandal of the gardener calling on the nanny at odd hours of the night. So very pedestrian, so very human, compared to the _real_ scandal of their affection.

She took a deep gulp of champagne and let the thought go. Or she would have, except—

“Eight years,” said Aziraphale.

“Yeah,” said Crowley.

Another long gulp of champagne. Aziraphale refilled both their glasses.

“I just thought—” said Aziraphale, all in a rush, as if Crowley had been hounding him about it, “—just thought that, there’s so little time left. Maybe. I mean, of course I think this will work. It will. It _must_. But…” he sighed. “Even if it does, everything will change, won’t it?”

Crowley considered that but didn’t speak.

Aziraphale continued: “Because if it _does_ work, I mean, they’re hardly just going to ignore it, are they? Someone will want to know why—several someones, I should wager. My office know I’m working against you, as it were, but they don’t really expect me to succeed; in fact, it sounds like they’ll be rather put out if I do. Presumably your lot are very determined that you _will_ succeed, at least at what they think you’re working towards.”

Crowley nodded.

“So what happens...after?” Aziraphale asked.

“Dunno.”

He cast her a dissatisfied look.

“What?” she asked around a mouthful of chips. “Not exactly got a precedent, have we?”

“Yes, but you’re the one who’s good at planning,” Aziraphale said. “Surely you’ve thought of it.”

Huh. She took a thoughtful sip as she considered that.

Truthfully, she hadn’t. _Truthfully_ , the whole plan seemed like such a far-fetched notion that she hadn’t really thought to look beyond its fruition. Considering it now, she supposed she’d vaguely assumed that things would kind of revert back to normal.

But of course that wouldn’t be the case. Hell did not forget. And—somewhat by definition—Hell _definitely_ did not forgive.

“Suppose we’ll just...run for it,” she said. Aziraphale’s head gave a little jerk and he looked at her very intently, and she heard her own words as if for the first time.

Well. That was rather more forward than she preferred to be, but—well, time _was_ running out, wasn’t it?

“Lots of space out there,” she continued. “Probably a lot of confusion above and below, might be enough for us to give them the slip.”

Aziraphale nodded thoughtfully, and some of the sudden tension went out of his posture. “Yes, I suppose so,” was all he said. He popped a grape into his mouth.

They ate in silence that only just managed to stay comfortable.

“So,” Crowley said eventually, casting about for something else. “I see the roses are all bedded down for the winter.”

“Oh—oh, yes,” Aziraphale answered. “Piled the soil up around them. Dug up all the lily bulbs this week, too.”

“Good, good.”

They moved on from there, drifting from topic to topic and trying to stay away from gloomy thoughts and foreboding.

Some long while after midnight, they had finished all the food (Aziraphale having done most of the work there) and stood out, shivering, in the garden to see if they could get a look at the fireworks, and drunk the Bollinger several times over. Crowley had at one point pulled out the pins keeping her hair in place and Aziraphale had rolled up his shirtsleeves and they were being comfortably ridiculous and Crowley was almost— _almost_ —glad, for just a moment, that the Antichrist _had_ been born, and delivered to her keeping, if it had led them to this precise moment.

She was quite sure, the next morning, that she’d fallen asleep on the couch—but she woke up tucked snugly into her covers, and her glasses were folded and sitting on her nightstand.

* * *

**2018**

They made a tradition of New Year’s Eve after that. It might be at the bookshop, or out watching the stars and fireworks, but one way or another, they made sure to welcome in the new year together.

It was just a little macabre, Crowley thought. Aziraphale kept up an air of determined cheeriness and they didn’t speak of the countdown that was running: the years left before Warlock’s eleventh birthday and the start (and hopefully the foiling) of Armageddon. But it was better—wasn’t it?—than moping around and giving voice to their doubts; better than that awful, voracious pit that opened in his heart when he thought about what might happen if they failed?

Forced cheer was a hollow comfort, but a comfort all the same.

This year they were at the Merchant House in the Square Mile. They plumbed the depths of the bar’s menu, drank and revelled until nearly eleven, and then mutually agreed to wander off. They didn’t speak to it, but Crowley dreaded the idea of being in the crowd as they cheered on the new year—the last one before they all found out if Crowley’s plan had worked.

The weight of it dragged at him as they walked through the city, but he refused to spoil an otherwise lovely night with those sorts of ruminations; he stayed mostly quiet. Where they ordinarily would have parted ways, Aziraphale instead asked him if he would like to come back for a drink—and indeed, Crowley liked that very much.

So it was that they were stumbling back into the bookshop (the door half-open and both of them half-into the doorway) just as the clocks were striking midnight. They made a tangle of limbs, each trying to hold open the door, each trying to usher the other in, each trying to stay out of the way, and all at once Crowley felt Aziraphale moving to hold him—really hold him, himself. And then—

and then there was the warmth of Aziraphale near him, the press of Aziraphale’s lips against his own, the sudden, flooding surge of electrifying delight as he realized that Aziraphale was _kissing_ him, that it was real and oh— _oh,_ it was like nothing he could have ever dreamt or hoped.

Crowley stood frozen in place for a heartbeat, processing the experience of being _kissed by Aziraphale._ Around them, the street was ringing with the cheers of everyone else celebrating the stroke of midnight, but that was a dim and distant thing compared to the shining heat that consumed Crowley in an instant, to the pounding in his ears.

Before he had time to react—to, what, to kiss him back? to shove him inside and slam the door behind them? to get on his knees right there in the doorway?—it was over. Aziraphale was drawing back, taking a little step away from him, and they looked at each other. A heartbeat passed.

“Happy New Year,” said Aziraphale.

“Y-yeah,” said Crowley.

“I’m sorry, I oughtn’t have—”

“—No, no,” Crowley said, interrupting him, not much caring what _exactly_ he was about to apologize for. “‘S’fine.”

“Just a...a tradition,” Aziraphale explained, and he waved a hand in the general direction of the pub across the street, which was full of rowdy celebrants.

“Right,” said Crowley. “Tradition.”

Did that mean...what did that mean? What sort of tradition was it? Was that sort of thing between friends coming back in vogue?

He thought he could still taste him.

Crowley nearly jumped out of his skin when Aziraphale touched him a moment later, but the angel was only patting his elbow to direct him inside, out of the cold. The door thudded closed behind them and Crowley wondered at how small the shop felt suddenly, and how piercing Aziraphale’s regard could be. He tried to project an air of nonchalance as he made his way to the back of the shop, where they often sat to drink.

Shortly they both had a glass of wine and Crowley was working very hard to not ask about what sort of tradition Aziraphale had been thinking of when he kissed him. For his part, Aziraphale didn’t mention it again—so Crowley assumed a repeat was out of the question.

Instead, they talked of small things: a shipment of books Aziraphale was looking forward to receiving, the last show Crowley had seen, the merits of candying fruit for use as cocktail garnish. Aziraphale was staunchly opposed and argued that _more_ sweetness was almost never what a drink needed; Crowley took the side that it was more fun to eat the candied ones, and if Aziraphale didn’t like them then he should just have given his to Crowley.

“Besides,” he added. “Don’t you trust the bartenders? They ought to know best, right?”

“I’ve had quite some time to develop a rather sophisticated palate, dear,” said Aziraphale.

Crowley sniggered. “Is _that_ how you like to think of it? Call a spade a spade: you’re fussy.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips and didn’t respond, which only made Crowley laugh harder.

They carried on like that a while more, light-hearted and plain, and by the time Crowley excused himself and left, he had almost managed to put the kiss out of his mind.

* * *

**2019**

The next winter was altogether different.

For one thing, it ought not have happened—but it did. The Earth still existed; the humans went through their festivities and celebrations entirely unaware of any alternative.

For another, there was now a sleepy cottage in the South Downs that was, for the first winter ever (but far from the last), inhabited by a demon and an angel. It was stuffed to the rafters with books, and plants crowded in around nearly every window.

For a third, the midnight kiss which had so perplexed Crowley was no longer a singular occurrence. They kissed often now, among other things—a perpetual joy which Crowley was not quite ready to accept as commonplace. It was too special to be familiar.

Within the cottage, Crowley was stretched out along the sofa, reclining with his upper half draped over Aziraphale’s shoulder and side. The angel was sitting upright and reading aloud from the book in his lap. A fire was roaring in the hearth. Snow had collected on the windowsills, where it cheerily reflected back the warm light from inside and out. There were no decorations except for the string of fairy lights Aziraphale had put up in November, which he insisted were about coziness and not at all to do with any holiday.

Crowley was listening with only half an ear; he enjoyed the quiet music of Aziraphale’s voice far more than whatever the author might have to say. He drowsed, and he listened, and he basked in contentment.

They’d been like this for quite some time, possibly for days—Crowley was certain it had been a different book at the start. The quiet days at the end of the year might shift and blur together for humans; for Crowley and Aziraphale this year, they had lost meaning entirely. He was fairly sure they were not yet to the new year, but what would it matter if they were? There was no countdown now, no timer running out with every day.

He turned and snuggled closer to Aziraphale, laying sideways and pressing his face into the angel’s stomach. Aziraphale kept reading and brought his hand up to play gently with Crowley’s hair.

Much later, Crowley became aware that he was now listening only to Aziraphale’s breath and the crackling of the fireplace. He flopped over a bit so he could look around.

“You stopped reading,” he accused.

“Yes, well, I believe that’s the custom when one has reached the end of a book,” Aziraphale replied, running one hand over Crowley’s neck and shoulder, playing with the collar of his shirt and smoothing down wrinkles where the fabric was bunched up.

“Already?”

Aziraphale chuckled. “Greedy thing,” he said, his voice warm with affection, and he bent down to plant a kiss on Crowley’s cheek.

Instantly, Crowley reached up to hold Aziraphale’s head in place, then turned his own head to claim a second kiss, this one on the lips.

“Very,” he agreed, and he kissed him again.

Aziraphale’s kisses were sweet: soft as rose petals, gentle as a stream, and as all-consuming as the ocean’s tide. Each time, Crowley found himself dragged under again by his angel, by his _desire._

He shifted, shimmying upward so Aziraphale didn’t have to lean over so far. This had the salutary effect of bringing them into even closer contact—he was nearly on Aziraphale’s lap. The angel groaned into their kiss and wrapped his arms around Crowley as if he was afraid the demon might pull away.

Even now, Crowley thought, even after weeks and months of freedom and togetherness, it felt like it might all be snatched from them in a moment. Like he might at any point wake up and realize that their allegiances to Heaven and Hell still held them in check.

But every day that fear felt a little more distant. It was no longer his first thought in the morning as he woke up; no longer his immediate concern when Aziraphale was out of sight. It was being covered over, buried under days spent in quiet comfort, under a thousand little touches and affirmations.

So he leaned into that kiss, and the one after it. He pressed himself closer to Aziraphale and filled each kiss and touch with all his joy and love and want.

He opened his mouth and tasted Aziraphale’s lips and tongue, tasted his desire and felt it in the way the angel opened to his explorations.

“Whatever shall I do with you?” Aziraphale asked when Crowley moved his head to press a trail of kisses across the angel’s cheek to his ear, where he then nibbled and sucked at lobe of his ear, the shell of it, and the hollow behind it.

“Anything you like.”

Aziraphale chuckled and turned his head to kiss Crowley on the lips again. One of his hands came up and curled in Crowley’s hair, gently pulling at it until Crowley gave a little sigh of pleasure and tilted his head back. With the grace of great strength, Aziraphale lifted Crowley with just his other arm. He kissed Crowley’s chin, then down his neck, as he maneuvered them so that shortly Crowley was no longer sitting atop Aziraphale’s lap, but lying down on the sofa with the angel kneeling over him. Then Aziraphale was unbuttoning Crowley’s shirt and kissing each inch of skin as it was exposed.

When he got all of the buttons open, Aziraphale paused and lapped with broad strokes of his tongue across Crowley’s abdomen, and Crowley felt his muscles tensing at the almost-tickle of it, felt himself growing even harder as the trail of Aziraphale’s tongue set him afire. Then the angel was moving on, sucking on one of Crowley’s nipples and gently toying at it with his teeth while he undid Crowley’s belt and trousers.

It was marvelous, Crowley thought, how these sensations could so utterly enthrall him. He lay helpless under Aziraphale’s hands, luxuriating in the angel’s attention and attentions. It was as pleasing to feel the pressure of his touch there, as he slipped a hand between Crowley’s legs, as to feel the heat of his gaze when he looked up and met Crowley’s eyes. Already, his angel’s cheeks were flushed with color, his eyes bright and pupils wide.

Indecent—that’s what it was. This _angel,_ this heavenly being shouldn’t be allowed to look so damn wicked. No—no, now that Crowley knew it was an option, he couldn’t imagine going back to a version of reality where Aziraphale never looked at him like this. He groaned as Aziraphale pressed one finger behind his balls and stroked him gently. Aziraphale lingered there, then pulled his hand forward, just barely dragging his fingers over Crowley’s skin until Crowley was shivering with delight.

Still fondling Crowley’s cock, Aziraphale leaned forward so he could ply Crowley with still more kisses: first little feathering pecks all up Crowley’s chest and neck, then slow, demanding, open-mouthed kisses that left Crowley dizzy with want. Even as he tasted Crowley’s mouth and pulled little sighs from him between kisses, his hands were busy: on Crowley’s prick, at his neck, running through his hair, clutching at his sides, everywhere.

“Wanna see you,” Crowley mumbled, too full of languid pleasure to be bothered with buttons and braces, and he snapped his fingers once.

Aziraphale, suddenly naked, laughed. Without any clothing to get in the way, Crowley could see that the blush in his cheeks spread all the way down his neck to his chest, could see that Aziraphale, too, was hard and eager.

His lover lay down, sidling in between Crowley and the back of the couch. Then he coaxed Crowley’s legs open, so that one of his legs was over Aziraphale and hooked over the back of the sofa and the other was sprawled out to rest on the floor. Aziraphale was pressed tight to Crowley’s side, clinging to him, with one arm under Crowley’s neck and the other reaching down to Crowley’s cock. He could feel Aziraphale’s hot breath against his ear and neck, could hear the raggedness of his exhalations, and it stirred Crowley to even greater heights.

Aziraphale kept his hand moving in luxuriously slow strokes, now harder, now softer, and entirely exquisite. As the angel kept going, Crowley could feel tension building in him, had to stretch his legs farther and roll his head back because _fuck,_ he had to do _something_ , his corporation surely couldn’t just _take this_.

But it could, and it did, and all at once he was shaking, his hips were jerking violently, and he could feel pulses of come falling onto his belly and chest.

He gave a full-body shudder as Aziraphale wrapped both his arms around him, holding him impossibly tight and murmuring soft praises and compliments in his ear.

“You’re so pretty,” the angel whispered, wringing another shiver from the demon. “Entirely lovely, and stretched out just for me to see.”

Crowley whined a little as Aziraphale traced a fingertip lightly down the center of his chest, then traced his hip around one side.

“And you sing so sweetly,” he added, his voice low and delighted.

Aziraphale kissed his neck and shoulders. While Crowley was still aglow with pleasure, he felt Aziraphale test at his entrance with one slow, gently finger. He would have thought it would be too much, but it was instead perfect, and he moved to better accommodate it.

“There you go,” Aziraphale said encouragingly, using his other hand to hold Crowley close to himself. “How is that, my love?”

Crowley did not have the capacity to form a coherent reply, but Aziraphale didn’t seem to mind.

His fingers were slow but inexorable, and the sensation built and built until Crowley was moaning without pause.

Finally, _finally_ , Aziraphale gave him what he wanted most but couldn’t demand. He adjusted Crowley so that the demon was almost entirely on top of him, lying on his back atop Aziraphale’s chest. Crowley nearly cried with relief when Aziraphale pushed into him, then brought his other hand up so he was hugging Crowley from behind while inside him, cradling him and fucking him and kissing the back of his shoulders and neck.

“Oh, _dearest,_ ” Aziraphale whispered, like a prayer.

Crowley gave himself over entirely to the leisurely, steady movement of Aziraphale under him and inside him, his rock and shelter. He rode the rolling motion of Aziraphale’s hips under him and gloried in the feel of Aziraphale’s arm wrapped around him, gentle and unyielding, holding him close, keeping him secure.

The only sign Crowley had that Aziraphale was near to release was his breath: the angel went from gasping in deep breaths to barely breathing at all, and only in quick, shallow breaths. Crowley reached one hand back, laced his fingers through Aziraphale’s hair, and tried to turn his head to kiss the angel.

He made it—sort of—and managed to plant a kiss on his temple. Then Aziraphale came, with one last delicious thrust of his hips up and into Crowley—and that was enough; Crowley came again, from the stimulation and from the joy of the experience. Aziraphale wrapped both arms around the demon as if he might crush him into himself, and he whispered Crowley’s name, even as Crowley was still shaking with his climax.

They lay comfortably like that a while, both drawing in calming breaths, with nothing but the fire in the hearth to mark the passing of time. It may have been an eternity; it didn’t feel long _enough_ , not nearly long enough, when Aziraphale at last pulled himself out and adjusted them so that he was spooned up behind Crowley with both of them on their side.

“You know you’re stunning?” Aziraphale asked, propping himself up slightly so he could bend his head down to trace his nose along the outline of Crowley’s ear, nuzzle behind it, and plant kisses on his neck. One hand was tracing idly up and down the demon’s side. “Just seeing that beautiful face of yours, there at the end, when you turned to kiss me—all it took.”

“Liar,” Crowley said lazily.

“No, I mean it. You undo me utterly, my dear. Always have.”

Crowley turned and buried his face in the sofa pillows, and Aziraphale kindly did not mention it. The angel seemed to be content to keep touching Crowley, drawing invisible patterns on his skin with the very tip of his fingers, making Crowley’s skin prickle into goosebumps.

At length, Crowley uncovered his face.

“You too,” he said.

“Hmmm?”

“You—you too. Always, y’know… You always look nice.”

He couldn’t see it, but he could _feel_ Aziraphale’s smile, could hear it in the angel’s little hum of pleasure.

“Thank you,” was all he said. Then: “Shall I make us some coffee? And you can pick out the next book, perhaps?”

“Yeah,” said Crowley. “Alright.” But he reached up and caught Aziraphale’s hand where it rested over his own heart, and after that, it was quite some time before either of them thought of making coffee.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this soft little holiday one shot. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as [thelasthomelyurl](https://thelasthomelyurl.tumblr.com/)! Asks and prompts are open, or we can just talk about how good these beings are. 
> 
> If you liked this, you can visit my user page for Ineffable smut, angst, fluff, and more. 
> 
> I’d love to hear what you thought down in the comments!


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